The photo is documented in The Tornado Season of 1976 by Allen Pearson, Frederick Ostby Jr., and Larry Wilson, a book published in affiliation with the National Weather Service, being described as follows in the book: "The Statue of Liberty Tornado on 7 July 1976 as seen at a distance of about 2.5 miles from The Battery. Tornado formed near the Jersey City waterfront."

Time eventually removed the photo from their website and corrected the post: "CCorrection: This post previously featured a photo from 1976. Original story follows:

"This photo comes courtesy of Dave Carlson's Twitter feed - not sure if he took the photo, or merely found it online."

"Found it on Google searching NYC Tornado." Carlson, the original Tweeter of the photo, told Craig Kanalley from The Huffington Post. "Merely to mess with friends and when asked I told them it was fake. A friend told me TIME posted and I couldn't believe it. I wasn't asked by him if the photo was real or not.. I got off my train stop and saw I had tons of @ replies. Not my intention whatsoever. Pretty ridiculous and I hope he didn't get in any trouble for posting false news."